Plenty of flak has been fired in this direction recently from Her Majesty's Press, so it's good to see that the Mirror has found a few positives in the Blues Revolution.

Hot on the heels of top writer Oliver Holt's favourable comparison with Real Madrid comes columnist-player Robbie Savage, endearingly billed as Mr Marmite (as in you either love him or hate him).

Sav hasn't always come over as the thinking-man's footballer in an interesting career, but he does have insider knowledge when it comes to City's manager and his qualities.

So after noting that the former Wales midfielder rated Stephen Warnock (Blackburn to Aston Villa) and Gareth Barry as the bargains of the window, here's his take on another new Blue:

"Pricier but making as big an impact is Emmanuel Adebayor. He's scored three vital goals and his work rate, for a player who was accused of strolling about at Arsenal, is phenomenal.

"That's got to be down to my old Blackburn gaffer Mark Hughes, who is a devotee of the ProZone system which tracks everything a player does on the field. Sparky used it to break our performances down into minute detail.

"Every Monday morning we'd sit down and get a full statistical briefing on the total distance you'd covered during the game, how many high-intensity runs you'd made and how many sprints you'd done.

"A top 10 list of our players would come up in each category and you were chuffed it you were at the top. If you were consistently near the bottom, the manager would have a quiet word.

"But there was one week when the word wasn't so quiet. That was when the top 10 list of high-intensity runs came up and Brad Friedel was at number 10 - which meant our goalkeeper had done more running at speed than one of our outfield players!

"The gaffer was straight on his case and rightly so - and things improved for the player. Mark Hughes won't tolerate any laziness among his players, no matter how much they have cost, and that's what will make City legitimate contenders for the top four this season."

So when we see Robinho's widely-reported assertion that he asked to be left out at Portsmouth to be fresh for Brazil against fierce rivals Argentina, take it that Hughesy had the final say ...